


Tells

by desperationandgin



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperationandgin/pseuds/desperationandgin





	Tells

James is starting to pick up on her habits. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad, just that he’s spent enough time with her now to know when she’s angry or happy. Or when she says she doesn’t want to talk but really only needs a little nudge. He’s watching her now from the couch as he pretends to read while she makes dinner, and James has to be amused by the irony of it all. Here he is, an ex-con with a rap sheet about a mile long, being made dinner by a woman who, for all he knows, tasered the shit out of people back in Miami, too. There are exactly three facts he knows about Juliet: She wants to get off this damn rock, she reads just as much or maybe more than him, and she can’t cook for shit. None of that is exactly ground breaking. Or fair, considering he knows she had a file at least as thick as  _Carrie_  chock full of information about him.  
  
Maybe that’s another thing he knows about her: Her favorite book is  _Carrie_. When she’s upset, she gets it out. It was the only book she pulled out of the welcome wagon after she agreed to stay. And he knows she only reads it when she’s upset because it’s usually after she yells at him about the toilet seat being up or clothes hanging off of doorknobs or half empty cartons in the fridge. She writes when she’s upset, but then it’s a different kind of upset. Not directed at him or anyone really. Just a quiet, almost sad kind of anger that she takes out on a notebook every now and then. He’s been tempted to read it, but he wants her to trust him. For what, he doesn’t know yet. But he figures it’s better to have her on his side than not.  
  
“Hey, Blondie. Whatcha makin’?” he asks curiously when he figures out she’s glancing at him from the corner of her eye. She knew he was watching her and didn’t say anything. Interesting.  
  
“Hamburger helper.”  
  
He wrinkles his nose. “That even been invented yet?”  
  
Juliet turns to smirk at him. “You don’t remember eating hamburger helper as a kid?”  
  
“Hell no,” he says, taking off his glasses. “My uncle owned a barbecue joint, grew up on the best ribs in Alabama.” There, another thing she knows about him, he thinks, even though it’s small.  
  
“We used to have this at least once a week. My dad left and Rachel was usually the one trying to throw something together for the two of us to eat.”  
  
She turns back to what she’s doing; measuring water to let the meat, pasta, and seasoning boil down. Something else he knows now, though: her dad walked. “Rachel your sister?” he asks conversationally, tossing down the book. Years of being a con man have taught him things like when to shut the hell up and flash his dimples, and something else that comes in handy when you’re trying to figure someone out: how to read body language. Everyone has tells; it’s a rare person that can control eye twitches and tense shoulders damn near perfectly. And if he didn’t know better, he’d think she didn’t hear him. But the way her shoulders tighten and she stops stirring for a second, he knows she heard him. It’s taking her forever to answer though, and he’s about to move on when she does speak again.  
  
“Yeah. She’s my sister.”  
  
James starts thinking, about their conversation on the dock, the look on her face when she pointed out the blown up freighter on the horizon. Then there’s the fact that she was on her way to shit-faced drunk when he washed up on the beach. “She what you’re tryin’ to get back to, Goldilocks?” He doesn’t like the sound of that as much as ‘Blondie’.  
  
Juliet clears her throat and makes an effort to not look over at him. “We don’t have to talk about this. It doesn’t matter, I made my choice,” she says, finally glancing his way with a plastered on smile. “I’m here. I’m staying.”  
  
That’s a long path to ‘yes’, and he stands up, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer before leaning against the counter. Cracking the can, he looks at her, offering the beverage and taking a sip when she shakes her head. “Why did you decide to stay anyway? I mean hell, you coulda been in Tahiti by now.”  
  
She manages a ghost of a smile at that. “Me and what money?”  
  
“Right, money,” he says with a smile of his own. “Well. You hang around here a little while, you’ll make enough. Though it’d be a shame to see you go.”  
  
“Why does it sound like you’re trying to encourage me all of a sudden? Aren’t you the same guy who two and a half weeks ago pitched a delivery that got me to agree to stay?”  
  
“Well, you never mentioned you had a family before. Me, I got nothin’ but an alleged kid,” he says with a shrug. Even if they both know Clementine’s not just ‘alleged’.  
  
“I still don’t have anything. It’s 1974. Even if I left…there’s not really a point, is there?”  
  
James is quiet, and she blinks slowly. He watches as her eyes close, then open again like she’s trying to refocus. “So, if you wanna get back to her, why’ve you been on this island for three years?”  
  
Juliet puts down the wooden spoon she’s stirring with and looks up at him. “We really don’t have to do this.”  
  
“Hey, I think it’s only fair,” he objects. “How much dirt you got on me?”  
  
She hesitates, and he knows she’s weighing the pros and cons. Does she trust him? Does she realize that if she knows about the shit he’s done and is still hanging around,  _nothing_  she says is gonna make him go anywhere? She pours in the seasoning and stirs it, and he just waits, giving her time.  
  
“I came here because Richard – “  
  
“Maybelline?”  
  
“Yeah. Maybelline. Anyway, he told me there was a problem with women having babies on the island. That for some reason they kept getting sick and eventually dying.”  
  
“Like Claire?” he asks, a little more serious now, giving her his complete attention as she looks up at him when she nods.  
  
“Like Claire. He offered me a six month job back in 2001, to find out why and to fix the problem. I was divorced, my sister was healthy and pregnant, so I came. I thought it’d be a great opportunity.”  
  
“Wait a second, your sister was healthy? She wasn’t before?”  
  
“She had cancer. I…she’s fine now. I think.”  
  
“You don’t know for sure?” he asks, watching her face and the way her eyes fall.  
  
“Ben showed me a picture I…has it been weeks or months since your plane crashed? I don’t…the time travel makes it hard to keep track.”  
  
James is starting to get the picture, figures maybe he already knew back when she dropped the year she first came to the island. “Ben showed you a picture? What, you ain’t been home since then?”  
  
Juliet turns away from him, going back to the food, scraping the spoon against the bottom of the skillet so the thickening sauce won’t stick to the bottom. “He wouldn’t let me leave. He trapped me here.”  
  
He can feel his face darkening, eyes narrowing. “What the hell for?”  
  
She finally looks up at him again, swallowing a little. “He said I was his.”  
  
That’s all she says, and James feels a swell of anger rise up in his chest which takes him a little off guard because he’s had her back all along but this feeling, this want to  _protect_  her is new. “Son of a bitch…” he mutters, reaching out, but he’s not sure why so his hand drops again. “That freighter was your way out, too. Just like the rest of us,” he sighs, rubbing his jaw.  
  
“I guess…you know, it doesn’t even matter now, we’ve discussed this part. There’s nothing off of the island that’s even close to home.” She puts a lid over the skillet and steps away to let it simmer, going to the sink to wash her hands, and he has no idea why. Another habit he guesses. When she’s uncomfortable she messes with her hands.  
  
He feels like he has to give her something in return, even if she knows A through Z about him. As selfish as it is, he doesn’t want to talk about his parents or Clementine, or anything else from his past life. So he figures he’ll do something that (he hopes) is just as good.  
  
“Look…I ain’t exactly in a position to be makin’ this kind of promise. But if we ever figure out a way to get back, if Locke ever comes back…I’ll help you get back to the right time.”  
  
Juliet looks at him sideways, like she can’t quite believe what he’s saying. “Why? What does it matter if I get back to the right time? If I go, we’re all going. I don’t think the island is going to let you keep going on being a hippie.”  
  
They both smile a little and he offers the beer again, and this time she takes it from him. “I told you. I got your back. So hell, if that means…takin’ another field trip through the jungle so you can get back to Rachel, why not?”  
  
For just a second, he sees it. A shift in the way she looks at him, the tilting of their relationship. It’s trust. Respect. Two things he figures he doesn’t deserve. “When are we gonna eat, woman? I’m starvin’.”  
  
She throws an oven mitt at him and he’s satisfied that he knows enough for now.


End file.
